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“Big Trouble” by Clinton B. Campbell

While I was out-to-lunch,
my wife answered the phone.
It was Dave Barry calling me.

I had been warned she might
run off with a prose writer.
I am a poet with no future.

He promised her
a Stephen King first edition
and a night job at Krispy Kreme.

Now she is living in Miami.
I recognize her in Dave’s new novel,
she’s Pixie, the porno queen.

“A little to the left,”
her one and only line.
I know she wants to come back,

but I canceled my subscription
to the Miami Herald.
It’s as good as a Mexican divorce.

Clinton B. Campbell says: “‘The first books they burn are poetry books; the first people they put in jail are poets.’ This quote is historically true. Why are the lowly poets so important to be imprisoned, as was the case in South America, Russia and most other imperialist nations over the history of writing? I believe it is because poets are the keepers of the truth, and ‘they’ don’t want the truth to be known. As a poet or any writer, it is our responsibility to keep telling the truth knowing the truth has little to do with the facts and little to do with recorded history.” Clint is currently re-reading Nineteen Eighty Four. Even though he is widely published, Clint is probably best known as house-husband for photographer/poet Karen M. Peluso. They live in Beaufort, SC.